I've got a show to recommend that I genuinely think you and your kids are going to love.
It's called Lightcatchers, a brand new award-winning cinematic audio adventure from the team behind Batman, High Volume and Story Pirates.
If your house is into pinna favorites like Grim Grimmer, Grimmest or Hero Hotel, this is absolutely your next play.
Stick around for a preview at the end of this episode.
Then search Lightcatchers wherever you get your podcasts.
Hi, my name is Adam Gidwitz.
I'm an author.
I'm also a storyteller.
I like telling all kinds of stories, but I especially like telling grim fairy tales.
You may think you know grim fairy tales, and you may think that they are sweet and boring.
But listen, those tales you heard were the cute, happy little kid bedtime versions of the grim tales.
The original Grim Fairy Tales aren't like that at all.
They're weird, and sometimes gross, and often scary.
In other words, they're grim.
And I'm about to walk into a classroom and tell one of the original Grim Grim Tales to a bunch of kids.
Do you want to join me?
Do you want to hear a grim fairy tale?
Let me help you decide.
On a scale of grim, grimmer, and grimmest, the story I'm going to tell today is grim.
It's more weird than scary, but it is definitely weird.
If I get to a part of the story and you start to feel scared or uncomfortable, this is what you could do.
You could turn down the volume and count to five, then turn the volume back up.
If it still seems like a part you don't want to hear, just turn the volume down and count to five again.
You know how much weird and gross and scary you're ready for.
You know what you need.
Okay, I'm at the classroom door now.
There are kids inside, waiting to hear a grim fairy tale.
So, are you coming in?
Grim.
Grimmer.
Grimmest.
All right.
This story is called The Iron Stove.
Once upon a time, there was a princess whose parents gave her every single thing her heart desired.
I want a pony.
The next morning when she woke up, a pony was chewing on the curtains in her bedroom.
I want a tea party.
Every lord and lady from miles away was expected to show up within the hour.
I want a real live lion.
Her parents got her a lion, but then it ate her favorite servant.
So they took it back to wherever you get lions from.
But one day, the princess told her parents, I want a best friend.
Now, a best friend is harder to get than a pony or a lion because you can't just buy a best friend.
But the princess didn't understand that.
After all, the princess had always gotten everything she wanted in the past, and she assumed it would be this way with everything forever.
So her parents brought many young people to the castle to be the princess's best friend.
But she sent them all away.
Send her away.
I don't like her.
Send her away.
I don't like her.
Send her away.
I don't like her.
Well, the princess said she didn't like them.
But the truth was, none of them liked her because she was spoiled and selfish.
But she said she didn't like them because it didn't feel good to be disliked.
After the 14th potential best friend was brought before the princess and then sent away, the princess threw a temper tantrum.
She cried and slammed doors and broke irreplaceable family heirlooms like her great-grandmother's favorite hand mirror and her great-uncle's best tea set and her great-aunt's collection of baby tea, which was pretty normal for her.
But then she decided to run away, which was not normal for her.
The princess ran into the woods and immediately got lost.
She was lost for nine days.
On the tenth day, she found an iron stove in a clearing in the woods.
The iron stove was squat and black and had a place to put firewood in and a spot to boil water on top and it was about as big, as well as big as a stove.
Why is there an iron stove in the middle of a forest in a field?
Great question.
I have no idea.
Yeah, no clue.
Because it's a fairy tale and fairy tales are weird.
That's not suspicious.
The princess sat down beside the iron stove.
Hello, said the stove.
The princess shrieked.
Sorry, said the stove.
I'm scared.
I didn't mean to scare you.
I'm really a prince.
I'm just trapped inside an enchanted iron stove.
Well, the princess didn't believe that.
Would you believe it if you met an iron stove and he told you it was an enchanted prince?
You would run?
But even though she didn't believe that the stove was a prince, she was lost and she did need help.
So she said...
I am a princess, and I am lost.
Will you please help me get home? said the stove.
A prince and a princess both lost in the forest.
How exciting!
Well, the princess didn't think it was exciting to be stuck in a forest with a talking stove at all.
The stove said, I will help you find your way home.
Will you?
Oh, thank you!
Yes, but in return, you must agree to marry me.
You're marrying someone that you've known for less than a minute?
And by someone, again, you mean a stove.
A stove.
An iron stove.
Well, the princess had no desire to marry someone she had just met, let alone an iron stove.
But she also didn't want to starve to death in the forest.
So she thought... I'll just say yes.
How can a stove hold me to my promise?
So she promised...
Then the stove said You must also promise that when you get home you will come back tomorrow with a knife and scrape away this iron.
You'll be glad you did.
So again, the girl promised, with no intention of keeping her promise.
The stove gave the girl perfect directions which got her home in just three hours, though she had been lost for nine days.
The princess's parents were thrilled when they saw her, but the princess immediately started weeping about the horrible promise she'd made and how she'd have to go back, scrape at the iron and marry an enchanted stove.
Who claimed to be a prince?
Do I have to?
I know all of you have said those exact words to your parents, probably in exactly that intonation.
Can you all say it right now?
Well, the princess's father and mother never made her do anything she didn't want to do.
But they were a little worried about their daughter breaking a promise to an enchanted talking stove.
They consulted with the royal magicians.
The royal magicians all agreed that it would be a grave mistake indeed to break a promise to an enchanted talking stove.
But I really don't want to.
Whined the princess.
Her father said, I have an idea.
There is a miller in my kingdom with a daughter who looks a bit like you.
A miller is someone who grinds grain into flour to make bread.
The king went on.
We can send the miller's daughter to the stove instead.
So they sent the miller's daughter and she tried to scrape the iron away.
But she scraped all day and all night without making a scratch.
Finally, as the sun rose, the stove said, I think it's morning.
The miller's daughter said, Yes, I can hear my father's mill starting to grind the grain into flour.
Then you're not the princess.
You're the miller's daughter.
Be gone.
And she gladly went away.
When the king and queen heard that the miller's daughter had failed, they sent the swineherd's daughter.
Anyone know what a swineherd does?
I think it's...
The swineherd's daughter scraped at the stove all day and all night, and she didn't make a scratch either.
Finally, as the sun rose, the stove said, I think it's morning.
The swineherd's daughter said, Yes!
I can hear my father calling to his pigs.
Then you're not the princess.
You're the swineherd's daughter.
Be gone!
And she gladly went away, too.
The princess's parents sent many, many girls to the iron stove, but he sent everyone back.
Eventually, they ran out of girls in the kingdom.
And although the princess cried and wept, her parents were pretty fed up with her at this point.
Her father said, You heard what the royal magician said.
I can't afford to have a talking stove angry with me.
So the princess went into the forest, found the stove, and started scraping with a knife.
Within an hour, there was a small hole in the iron.
Within two hours, the hole was large enough that the princess could see straight into the stove.
Well, hello, said a prince who was curled up inside the stove.
I'm glad you finally came back.
The princess looked carefully at the prince in the iron stove.
He was very handsome, and he seemed very kind.
He could have said something mean about all the other girls she had sent or about how she had broken her promise to him.
But he didn't.
He just smiled kindly at her.
She said, And she kind of thought she meant it.
They talked as the princess scraped at the hole.
By the time the hole was large enough for the prince to climb through it, the princess realized that she enjoyed the prince's company very much.
Like, the way you might enjoy a best friend's company.
It felt very strange and very nice.
The princess thought, Maybe I could invite him to be my best friend.
So she did.
And he said, Yes.
On one condition.
I haven't been home in many years, and I need to see my parents.
Would you come with me?
The princess thought she might like that.
You see, after a while it gets tiresome to be a spoiled princess who gets everything in the world she wants, except for a friend.
So she said yes.
Go home and tell your parents, said the prince.
I'll wait right here.
But if you're not back by nightfall, I'll figure you've changed your mind and I'll leave without you.
I won't change my mind. said the princess, and she hurried off to tell her parents.
But when she got home, she decided she wanted a nice meal.
And a long bath.
And then another nice meal.
Then she had to decide what to pack.
And then she felt sleepy.
She thought to herself, I'll wait until morning.
We're best friends.
So she slept all night.
Patrick, let's go!
The clue is floating away in a hot air balloon.
Hey, sorry, this is kind of a bad time.
Claire and I just found a major clue and now it's airborne.
Anyway, I wanted to let you know that the parents behind Law & Order have something brand new for families.
Our podcast, Patrick Picklebottom Everyday Mysteries.
Patrick, it's headed towards the water tower.
Gotta go.
Listen on Apple or wherever you get your podcasts.
Did you know that you can listen to Grim, Grimmer, Grimmest without any ads interrupting the story?
Just subscribe to Pinna.
Not only will you get to hear me tell these fairy tales straight through the way I tell them to kids, you get access to tons of other awesome original shows and audiobooks all ad-free.
Subscribe to Pinna at pinna.fm.
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And remember, it's not a Smurf.
In the morning, the princess felt a little worried.
Maybe she should have kept her word and gone back to the prince when she said she would.
She quickly ate breakfast and then set out into the forest, ready to apologize to the prince.
But when she arrived at the iron stove, the prince was nowhere in sight.
The princess looked everywhere.
She circled enormous trees and looked under giant mushrooms.
But the prince was nowhere to be found.
And for the first time in her life, the princess wondered if she'd been selfish.
Yes, yes, you have been all your life.
Maybe now I'm wondering that.
She wandered, trying to figure out what to do now, until she came to a waterfall.
The princess sat down at the waterfall.
She did not cry.
She did not throw a tantrum.
She just felt sad.
Just then, a toad came hopping by, all dressed up in a suit.
What?
The toad said, Hello!
You look sad.
Would you like to come have supper with my family?
Well, this was surprising for a lot of reasons.
But the princess had already become best friends with a talking stove, so the toad wasn't really all that weird.
She said, The toad led her behind the waterfall to his home, where the princess sat down and had dinner with his family.
They asked her what she was doing in the forest all alone, looking so sad.
She explained what had happened.
The toad in the suit said Oh, we know the prince in the iron stove and we know where his kingdom is.
But the journey is long and dangerous.
A princess like you could never do it.
The toads were right.
The princess had never done anything hard in her entire life.
But she'd been having a lot of new experiences lately.
And she had lost her best friend.
Her only friend.
The princess decided it was time to try something hard for a change.
The toads tried to convince her not to go, but she insisted.
At last, the toad said, If you insist on going, you must take three things with you.
Three knitting needles, one large water wheel, and a walnut.
Said the princess.
Why do I need three knitting needles, a large water wheel, and a walnut?
We don't know, said the toad.
But we've heard that these are required to reach the prince's kingdom.
How did he get back to his kingdom then?
Well, he's from there.
So... So he just... He just... what?
He's from there.
And the princess said, Okay.
Even though she didn't understand at all.
So the princess set off carrying only three knitting needles and a walnut, with the large water wheel strapped to her back.
She walked for days and days and days.
She grew hungry and tired and sore.
But she kept going.
I think she ate her little walnut.
Yeah, she's not eating it.
Well, the water wheel.
So do you know what a water wheel is?
It doesn't actually have water in it.
A water wheel is a giant wheel that they use on mills often.
So it goes in the water, and as the water goes past it, it spins the wheel.
Finally, after a month of walking, she saw in the distance a strange mountain range.
The mountains shimmered like glass.
As she got closer, the glass mountains got tall and tall and tall, until at last they rose above her like an impassable wall.
They appeared to be glass, but were actually made of the smoothest clearest, hardest ice in the world.
The princess tried to climb the wall of ice, but she just slipped down.
She tried to smash through the wall of ice, but she just hurt her hands.
She tried to go around the wall of ice, but it never seemed to end.
The princess laid out the knitting needles, the water wheel, and the walnut in front of her.
She studied them for a while.
What do you think she should do?
Maybe she tries to break the ice with a knitting needle.
Oh.
Well, actually, that might not work because it's like the hardest ice on.
Yeah, let's find out.
Yeah, maybe they have to combine all of them.
Like the needles in the water wheel and then stick them onto a walnut.
I love that idea.
She would take the needles and she would bang it into it and then climb up.
She took a knitting needle and jammed it into the ice mountain.
It stuck.
She jammed the next above it.
It stuck too.
She stepped up on the lower of the knitting needles, balancing herself by gripping the upper one with her hands.
Then she reached way up above her head and jammed the third one into the ice.
She took the first knitting needle out of the ice, pulled herself up so she was standing on the second needle and repeated the process.
Then the needle would fall off.
It's so much weight and then it's like she's gonna.
It's not easy, but again you know it's pretty clever.
She left her water wheel.
Oh no, still strapped to her back.
What?!
!
Yeah.
And in this way, she scaled the glass mountains and made her way to the other side.
It took nearly half a year.
It was hard.
Yes, it was hard.
But the sunrises were beautiful.
Finally, when she reached the other side of the mountains, there was a desert with scorching hot sand that burned the princess's feet even through her shoes.
And she said, Seriously?
There was no way around the desert, no way under it, and certainly no way to walk across it.
She laid out the knitting needles, the water wheel, and the walnut.
She studied them for a while.
So what do you think she should do?
I think she should use the water wheel, take some ice and put the ice in the desert for about a day, day or so, so that it melts, so that she can put the water through the water wheel thingy, so that there'll be water on the desert.
That's smart.
That's really interesting.
First of all, it's an ice mountain next to a desert.
How does it even work?
Yeah, and then it's a little bit strange to me.
And then um also, how would she have not like seen or noticed or caught enough to the prince right well, he's from there.
What does that mean?
The princess picked up the water wheel, stood it upright on the sand and then climbed up on top And, balancing precariously, she walked on top of the water wheel all the way across the desert.
It took nearly half a year.
It was really hard.
But the sunsets were beautiful.
At last, she came to the prince's kingdom.
But by that time, the princess did not look like a princess anymore.
A year had passed and she was lean and strong from climbing the ice mountains and weathered and rough from crossing the desert.
She went to the prince's castle and tried to tell the guards that she was a princess, but they laughed on her face and kicked her down the road.
There was no way through the main gate of the castle because of the guards.
There was no way around the back of the castle because of more guards.
And there was no way over the walls, because the walls were really high, and besides, there were guards on top.
So what do you think she should do now?
Trade the guards a walnut.
What do you think?
It could be a poisonous walnut.
Uh-huh, maybe.
If she could either ask the guards to see the price or throw the walnut at maybe a window that he was in?
Oh, that's interesting.
She didn't throw the walnut at the prince's window.
Instead, she decided to get a job in the royal kitchens.
She worked and worked away as a kitchen maid until her hands were rough and red and her arms were strong like ropes.
And she learned some things.
She learned that you scour a pot with steel, but never the fine plates.
She learned that soap was good for plates, but bad for cast iron pans.
And she learned that the prince was due to be married to another princess.
Are you kidding me?
After all this, right?
The princess watched the prince dine with his bride-to-be.
The bride-to-be was jealous and selfish and vain.
The prince didn't even seem to like his bride-to-be very much.
That's a great point.
The princess was certain that if only she could talk to the prince and tell him of her great journey to reach him, perhaps he would reconsider going away with his bride-to-be.
But the princess could never speak to him alone.
The bride-to-be was always there, preventing the princess from even getting close.
So what should she do?
Take the walnuts and stuff it down her throat.
The princess sat down in the palace gardens and cracked the walnut.
Out of the nutshell spilled a beautiful ball gown.
Exactly the color of the ice mountains at sunrise and the sands of the desert at sunset.
What is she going to do now?
She's going to wear the dress and somehow change what she looks like.
The princess was just about to put the ball gown on when the bride-to-be rushed up to her.
She had been walking in the garden when she saw the ball gown in the princess's lap.
The bride-to-be ran up to the princess and said...
I'll give you anything for that dress.
So the princess thought carefully.
And then she replied, I just want ten minutes to talk to the prince.
And she quickly added, You can be there.
The bride-to-be eyed the princess skeptically.
But then she looked at the dress that was the color of sunrise and sunset at the same time.
The bride-to-be replied, Five minutes.
Deal.
So the bride-to-be took the princess to the throne room.
As they entered, the bride-to-be hissed, Five minutes.
When the princess, who was working as a kitchen maid, saw the prince, she threw her arms wide and shouted My best friend.
And the prince said, Uh, who are you?
The princess stared.
He didn't remember her?
She'd climbed over the ice mountains with knitting needles and rolled over a blazing desert on a water wheel and journeyed for a whole year and he didn't remember her.
She said, I freed you from the iron stove.
The prince said, The bride-to-be exclaimed, What is she talking about?
The princess turned to her.
He didn't tell you?
He was trapped in an iron stove for a very long time.
I got him out.
The prince squinted at the princess.
The girl who freed me was a princess, not a kitchen maid.
She was pampered and soft and a bit spoiled.
You are not she.
But the princess said... I am!
Or I was...
I climbed over the glass mountains with knitting needles and rolled over a blazing desert on a water wheel and journeyed for a whole year to find you.
I came all this way because I'd never had a best friend before I met you.
And I was selfish and conceited and spoiled.
And I made you wait too long.
And I could not stand the idea of losing you forever.
The prince stared and stared and stared.
And then he smiled.
He took the princess's hand.
He said, This is the one who freed me from the iron stove.
The one who climbed the glass mountains with knitting needles and crossed the blazing desert for me.
The first best friend I ever had, too.
And the bride-to-be said, Wait, what?
The prince said, Let's go.
I want to see this blazing desert and these glass mountains.
You didn't come over them yourself? asked the princess.
How did you get home then?
Oh, I'm from here.
That does not answer the question.
The prince shrugged.
Anyway, you want to show me the mountains and the desert?
Yes, said the princess.
The sun sets and sun rises particularly.
And they set off together, leaving both of their kingdoms behind.
And they lived happily ever after.
The end.
What was the walnut for?
What was the walnut for?
The gown.
Oh, yeah.
Yeah.
How could the frogs predict that she was the princess?
How could the toads predict that she was going to need all those things to get to the prince?
They heard that they needed all those things to get there.
But did they know she was a princess?
No.
The spoiled one?
Yeah.
I don't know.
All right, get out of here, guys.
Good job.
Grim Grimmer Grimmest is a Pinna Original Production.
Created and written by me, Adam Gidwitz.
Author of A Tale Dark and Grim.
Produced and edited by Ilana Milner.
Casting and voice direction by Paula Gammon-Wilson.
Sound design and mixing by Beat Street NYC.
Location recording by Jason Gambrell and Evan Viola.
Narrated by me, Adam Gidwitz.
Special thanks to the staff and students at Brooklyn Friends School and Manhattan Country School.
You guys are amazing.
Far away on the high Caribbean seas roams a swashbuckling pigeon-loving, burrito-gobbling pirate who's well a bit different than the other pirates.
Bless my Brussels sprouts.
Introducing the new podcast, Light Catchers, season one, Bob the Bad Pirate.
Bob the Bad Pirate wasn't bad because he liked to hurt people or call other pirates' names like Petunia Pillow Pants.
Bob the Bad Pirate was bad because he just wasn't very good at being a pirate.
Shiver me tooters!
Listen now to Lightcatchers, wherever you get your podcasts, and learn more at BeALightcatcher.com.
Light up the lanterns and follow me.
Hi, Grimmers.
We're celebrating the finale of Season 5 with a very special new video version of The Three Feathers and we need your help.
I would love it if you listened again to Parts 1 and 2 of Three Feathers and start drawing.
Illustrate your favorite scenes, your favorite characters.
The more scenes you illustrate, the more helpful it is to us.
And choose weird scenes.
You know definitely the big exciting, climactic scenes, but also just like strange little moments.
The more you draw, the more we'll be able to put into a special video version of the three feathers illustrated entirely by you all.
You can share your artwork either by sending an email to grim at realm.fm.
That's G-R-I-M-M at R-E-A-L-M dot F-M. or visit pinna.fm slash grim.
That's pinna P-I-N-N-A.
Dot F-M, slash G-R-I-M-M, and submit your artwork for our special video version of the three feathers, illustrated entirely by you.
